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St Mary
Magdalen, Norwich

As
the medieval churches of central Norwich fell
redundant during the course of the 20th Century,
so they met with fates of varying degrees of
kindness. None suffered the indignity of
demolition, other than most of those destroyed
and damaged by the Norwich blitz, but conversely
only a few have retained any liturgical
integrity. For the others, their furnishings were
often rescued, and placed elsewhere in the city
according to demand and suitability.

Thus, St George
Colegate now has one of the best collections
of Georgian furnishings in Norfolk, augmented
from elsewhere in the city, and St Julian, rebuilt
in the 1950s, also benefited from the fixtures
and fittings of several Norwich churches,
including the fabulous font from All Saints, There
were adornments from elsewhere for St John
Timberhill and St George
Tombland, among others, and when the church
of St James
the Less fell into disuse after the Second
World War, its more significant furnishings were
moved a short distance up the hill of Silver Road
to to the modern church of St Mary Magdalen.

A little
over sixty years later, I retraced their steps. St James
is now the Norwich Puppet Theatre - I had explored it
when I had visited all of the medieval churches of
central Norwich back in the autumn of 2005. But after
that, I am afraid that I somewhat neglected the Fine City
for the wilder backwaters of its rural county. However,
in January 2009 it suddenly struck me that this would be
the ideal time to renew my assault on the city. I was
well over halfway through revisiting the churches of
Suffolk, and I could afford to take my foot off the
accelerator there; and, although there were still about
fifty rural Norfolk churches which I needed to visit,
most of them were over in the far west, and the days
simply weren't long enough to get out there and see them.
I was also wary of cycling off into the back of beyond
when the weather forecast was so foreboding. Thanks to
the swiftness and frequency of the fine rail services
offered by National Express East Anglia, Norwich is less
than an hour from my house, and when the last Saturday in
January 2009 promised bright sunshine but sub-zero
temperatures, it seemed as though the weather and the
city were made for each other.

St Mary
Magdalen must be considered a suburban church, but it is
in fact very close to the city centre. At the bottom of
Silver Road, mad Herbert Rowley's inner ring road bursts
through the medieval city wall, and you climb up through
rows of 19th Century red brick terraces. The first church
you come to is not this one, but a fascinating Byzantine
Baptist church of 1910, unaccountably neglected by
Pevsner. A little further up the hill, almost at the top,
St Mary Magdalene sits back from the road. As I
approached, I could see that the small car park in front
was full of cars, and at first I wondered if something
was going on in the church. But then I noticed the
Weightwatchers Club placard at the entrance to the
extension. This extension is very good, about 1970 I
should think, with meeting rooms, kitchens and forming a
kind of cloister down the north side of the church. As if
to echo and complement it, the south side has been opened
up with what can only be described as patio doors (how
did they get past the Diocesan architect?!), but
generally it is all harmonious, and works very well.

St Mary
Magdalen dates from 1903, and was the work of diocesan
architect AJ Lacey. It is an elegant church, a world away
from the ponderous exercises in neo-Norman which his
predecessor Herbert Green was imposing on the diocese
only a decade or so earlier. It has much in common with
Charles Spooner's Ipswich St Bartholomew, with which it is
almost exactly contemporary. The use of a wide open
interior broken up by two arcades to create aisles, with
a clerestory above, is a conscious echo of the
traditional medieval East Anglian church, but is also a
reference to an Italianate basilica, a form thought
proper by the early 20th Century Anglo-catholics. The
west frontage, meanwhile, is nearly identical to that of
St Cuthbert, a mile or so up the Sprowston Road, a less
interesting church, but one which predates St Mary
Magdalen, so the arrangement must have been thought worth
repeating. There are two doors separated by what appears
to be the church office. However, the main entrance to
the church is now through the northern extension - as,
ironically, it is now at St Cuthbert.

The
interior of St Mary Magdalen has been considerably
reordered since the medieval font and rood screen came
here from St James in 1946. Today, the congregation sit
in modern chairs, whch always looks good in a church,
although in this case the effect is a little marred by
the retention of banked pews at the back of the church.
The screen once ran across the last bay but one to the
east, but the panels are now exhibited on the south wall.
They are very beautiful, although perhaps a little more
restored than Pevsner and Mortlock allow. The artist may
well have been the same as at Old Hunstanton. There are ten
panels, and the Saints depicted appear to be St Barbara,
St Sitha, St Agnes, St William of Norwich, St Joan de
Valois, St Martin, St Blaise, St Walstan, St Helen and St
Nicholas.

The font
is set neatly on a pedestal beside the south arcade. It
seems unlikely that this is where it would have been put
originally, so I wonder if it has also been moved since
1948. It has similarities with that at St Julian now.
Apostles stand in pairs around the bowl, while the stem
is flanked by eight female Saints - St Helen, St
Etheldreda and St Anne stand out. The foliage under the
bowl is proto-Renaissance in style, showing that this
font, like the screen, dates from the early 16th Century
rather than the 15th.

The
east window is filled with clear glass
surrounding the central figure of Christ the
King, an excellent setting, and a fine piece of
work, I assume by the King workshop. But this is
not the only glass of interest. While the font
and screen are well-known, and I'd been expecting
them, I hadn't expected the interesting
collection of roundels, figures and fragments in
other windows. Some of this is Continental glass,
including an excellent Dives and Lazarus, and a
rather gruesome mass martyrdom scene.

But it is
the English glass which is the most interesting.
The most striking figure is that of St Barbara
holding her tower, and it took me a moment to
decide that it is probably a modern replica,
possibly also by the King workshop. But the heads
of St Agnes (a gory dagger puncturing her throat)
and St James (a jaunty seashell on his hat) are
medieval, surely? And if so, where did they come
from? I could find no mention of them in Ann
Eljenholm Nichols' Early Art of Norfolk,
a book which I have come to trust as the single
most reliable guide to the medieval glass of the
county. Did they also come from St James?
Pondering this mystery, I continued my journey up
the hill.